Three unreleased My Bloody Valentine songs. Three. You know what I know, which isn’t much, plus what you know (Johari Window lolz).  These songs evidently were recorded sometime between Isn’t Anything and Loveless, and for whatever reason, surfaced just last week. If anyone has more info on this, give me a shout in the comments.

The conspiring part of my brain wonders if perhaps these were leaked deliberately to generate excitement for, supposedly, a new album from Kev and the Gang in the not too distant future.

Perhaps the details are menial anyway. All that matters is that “Bilinda Song” rips hard and Xmas came early for Kenny Bloggins this year.

MP3 :::
My Bloody Valentine – Cowboy Song
My Bloody Valentine – Kevin Song
My Bloody Valentine – Bilinda Song

Whoever said you can’t judge a book by its cover is an asshole. I was introduced to The Folklords‘ Release the Sunshine whilst poking around Ear X-Tacy over the weekend. Like magnetism, my eyes locked on this record that was on display in the psych/kraut/experimental section from rather far away. The kaleidoscopic band photo with a Polaroid-washed palette, Indian-inspired hippie chic wardrobes, and the album’s title imposed over a doily-like paisley sun in the upper right hand corner – oh hell yes, this record’s going to be very relevant to my interests. And they’re called the fuckin’ Folklords. You know this is shit’s gonna be rowdy. So I picked it up.

The record sounds exactly as the album art suggests – good vibin’, sunny, spellbinding, lazy and hazy psychedelic electric folk with serious zither and autoharp solos in tow. Originally released in 1968 on Canadian imprint Allied Records, little is known about this Toronto trio and their only album. Their obscurity says nothing about the quality of the music – only that the late ’60s were quite a competitive period for this type of sound. As the liner notes suggest (and I agree), the Folklords, strangely enough, sound closer to the Creation Records groups of the mid ’80s, the British bands emulating the timbre of flower power, than many of their contemporaries in 1968. This is especially pervasive on “Thank You For Your Kindness,” included below. You can extrapolate whatever you will from this sentiment.

Release the Sunshine isn’t anything you haven’t heard before, but it’s exciting nonetheless to find a pretty good document of Canada’s response to the west coast sound – one that was swept under the rug, no less. Fortunately, Lion Productions, who specialize in grabbing obscure psychedelia and craftily remastering their finds, recently released this gem, and its available here.

For fans of:  West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, The Left Banke, Margo Guryan

MP3 :::
The Folklords – Forty Seconds River
The Folklords – Thank You For Your Kindness

Six Organs of Admittance has dusted off the old tapes and collected some of his earlier and rarest material for the forthcoming RTZ, a fan-aimed compilation hitting shelves next Tuesday.  And zounds!  That shit is evil.  Of course, I mean this is the most loving sense.  Those of us familiar with School of Flower, The Sun Awakens, and the like know Ben Chasny and friends for engaging modalities, Fahey-esque and internationally-informed guitar noodling, and drone examinations, all with a slight bucolic, freewheeling, and sometimes whimsical aura. Not so much on RTZ.  Well, the noodling and drones are here, but the earlier material reflects a lot less of the good-times-pass-the-bong vibe that has oft defined many folks’ association with 6OA.

“Warm Earth, Which I’ve Been Told” is a tribal distress chant, or possibly a primitive summoning spell to seed clouds and deploy locust swarms.  Ben sings smoke signals and convinces you that living in the forest and off the land would be a pretty simple transition.  Interestingly enough, and without the hyperbole, this particular chanty, notwithstanding the collapsing midsection, resembles Chasney’s Comets on Fire acoustic, despite having been recorded a number of years before Blue Cathedral reared its head.  With styles and a replete repetoire like Chasny’s, it’s fun to try to trace where ideas may have come from.

“Creation Aspect Earth” sounds like a tune you’d hear at Aleister Crowley’s last dinner party, or what the four horsemen would bump on their over-the-shoulder ghetto blasters whilst igniting thatched-roof cottages.  Though “Creation Aspect Earth”sounds like a Jan Hammer album, this, I assure you, sounds nothing like Jan (though both Ben and Jan rule, but for different reasons).  If the song scares you at first, everything clams down after the 6-minute mark, and you are duly treated to an intimate glimpse of just Ben and his guitar hangin’ out and spitballin’.  Both movements are beautiful, however.

So to answer your question, fuck yeah it’s good – grip it here on dos discs or a 3-LP set. And for more background info and fUn FaCtS on RTZ, head over here.

MP3 :::
Six Organs of Admittance – Warm Earth, Which I’ve Been Told
Six Organs of Admittance – Creation Aspect Earth

With copious apologies, I regret not updating much the past couple of weeks.  I’m a dickfor.  I’ve had a lot going on with the holiday safari, relocation, yadda yadda.  But I will make it up to you with the promise of a new day, more updates, and a nice rare treat.

Illuminati was a compilation released in 1998, featuring various artists of varying caliber covering their favorite jam styles by Creation/C86 group The Pastels.  Actually, covering is not the right term, these are remixes. The majority of the compilation is quite glitch-centric, well informed by groups like To Rococo Rot and Mouse on Mars, and interestingly enough, retaining the original vocals of Stephen McRobbie.  However, there are some serious curveball artists on Illuminati as well, including My Bloody Valentine and Third Eye Foundation.

The MBV remixes are closer to Kevin Sheilds’ production work on Primal Scream’s Evil Heat and his thousand minute or so architecting of “Mogwai Fear Satan” for the Kicking a Dead Pig compilation than traditional MBV material.  So really, it’s just Kev, not My Bloody Valentine.  But never you mind, it’s still worth a listen.

Third Eye Foundation, if you’re not familiar, deserves a little degrees of separation mention.  Third Eye Foundation was the project of Matt Elliot of Flying Saucer Attack, who also wrote under the name Linda’s Strange Vacation, which featured Kate Wright of Movietone, who was also part of FSA.  Regular readers of this blog know that I feel morally obligated to drop Flying Saucer Attack on a regular basis, as they are the best shoegaze/noise/space rock band ever.  This can be statistically proven, though I don’t have the gumption to draft up a proof at this time.

My favorite Pastels song, from the Patron Saints of Teenage comp for Creation Records, is included for your consideration.  Read up on Creation if you’re just now diggin’ on it.

MP3 :::
The Pastels – Baby Honey
My Bloody Valentine – Cycle
My Bloody Valentine – Magic Nights
Third Eye Foundation – On the Way

Post-punk pioneers Wire were oft recognized as a group in a strange nether region – one that was too artsy to be punk, too punk for the art kids.  Wire was angular and minimal, with gorgeous melodies remaining subtle and rewarding.  As such, it makes total sense to extract those under-the-surface pop structures, add dense layers of sound that the band sometimes hinted at, and reimagine this begrudgingly poppy gem as shoegazing, whose artists also tended to be begrudgingly poppy. 

Covers of the song “Outdoor Miner” (from Chairs Missing) spanning ten years or more eventually all ended up on a limited release compilation called A Houseguest’s Wish from the Words on Music label.  Flying Saucer Attack’s reimagining of the song, with a 1995 copyright date, indicates one of the last recordings from the original Flying Saucer Attack before Dave Pearce disappeared for a while. Flying Saucer Attack, as expected, provides the loudest rendition.

Lush’s dream pop interpretation keeps closest to the original structure of “Outdoor Miner,” while Austin neo-shoegaze collective Experimental Aircraft tastefully expands the song into a bombastic, anthemic, hummable wall of sound with a driving groove.  Enjoy this rare treat!

MP3 :::
Flying Saucer Attack – Outdoor Miner
Experimental Aircraft – Outdoor Miner
Lush – Outdoor Miner

A while ago, I impulsively picked up this comp at the Wicker Park area Reckless Records. When I approached the counter, the clerk, temporarily abandoning the general affected demeanor of a record store employee, exclaimed “man, I was wondering when someone was finally going to pick that up!” So I figured I gripped something pretty rad that day.

Trap Door: An International Psychedelic Mystery Mix was compiled by San Francisco-based Dis-Joint Records, a label interested in all the weird freaky-deeky obscure shit that tingles my solar plexus. It’s a mixtape, in some ways, insofar as the compilation flows together seamlessly and features DJ-helmed breakbeats augmented by dub low end. In other ways, not so much, as the source material jumps between disparate sounds and genres within the psychedelic element of the ’60s and ’70s. Trap Door strikes a great balance.

The result is a sound straddling the median between Os Mutantes/Love and DJ Shadow/J Dilla. Fans of Ghost Box will also fervently dig. File this under the same categories as the Sublime Frequencies releases, Light in the Attic’s The Free Design: The Now Sound Redesigned, and Edan’s flower-power psych-hop ripper Beauty and the Beat.

Billed as an “international psychedelic mystery mix,” Trap Door takes the listener on an anarchic sonic trek to the four corners of the planet with a freshly packed hookah in one hand and headphones in the other. Recorded from original vinyl pressings, this handpicked selection of secret global oddities from Israel, El Salvador, Turkey, Korea, and elsewhere received extra tweaking with the addition of bugged-out dialog and liberal use of an Echo-Plex for the hazy, dub-style final mixdown. Trap Door literally veers all over the map, careening from synth-heavy, Euro prog-fusion throb to minor-key, Middle Eastern violin workouts to melancholy, Latin psych-pop while still coming together as a cohesive nocturnal soundtrack.

Though several of the tracks unsurprisingly spotlight the kind of breaks that make big-name producers go weak in the wallet, it’s Veltri’s ear for stunning tunes comparable to the best work of South American psych giants Os Mutantes and We All Together that elevates the mix to a higher level. The willful exclusion of artist info will madden detail-obsessed record geeks, but even the savviest digger would probably need several lifetimes and unlimited frequent flyer miles to track down these lost gems — even if they had all the pertinent info. Beat heads and psychedelic excavators alike will find plenty to love about the trippy yet still fundamentally funky flavors of Trap Door.

Here are some of my favorites.  The whole compilation is great, so if you like this, pick it up. Fo’ realz. Do it. Think of it like this – you’re getting a few dozen rare and priceless psych gems tied together in one album priced under $20.

MP3 :::
Trap Door International Psychedelic Mystery Mix – Untitled 3
Trap Door International Psychedelic Mystery Mix – Untitled 4
Trap Door International Psychedelic Mystery Mix – Untitled 11
Trap Door International Psychedelic Mystery Mix – Untitled 12
Trap Door International Psychedelic Mystery Mix – Untitled 15

Since setting short or long term goals for yourself tends to keep you focused and away from the dangers of drugs, so as such, it is my short term goal to write a few entries this week digging through my archives. My archives are kept in a fortress outside the city proper and mote-protected.  However, I will share certain gems from these archives on my blog, because sharing is caring. Here’s one from classic UK dream pop outfit Chapterhouse.

So, Chapterhouse’s 1991 release Whirlpool never made a huge, umm, splash in the shoegazing scene, but it was very good. Had they developed these sounds more, expanding on their sonic landscape instead of following-up with a corny, overtly poppy, overly slick, incredibly dated sounding album (1993’s Blood Music), Chapterhouse might have been as recognizable of a name as Ride.

Though Chapterhouse tended to be more poppy than many of their contemporaries, they made quite a statement when they weren’t going for verse-chorus-verse structures and soft guitar sounds.

This… this is a total brain melter. And it’s a rare treat.

“Satin Safe” is shoegazing’s most sinister song.  These guitars are in pain. The song’s crescendo in the third act is scary. I love this because this is one of the few times you hear a wall of sound that is uncomfortably suffocating. You would’ve never seen this coming from Chapterhouse. Unfortunately, this song never made it on Whirlpool during its initial release. I was able to get my hands on the out-of-print Sunburst EP that this trenchant anthem appeared on a few years back.

Like Sarah Palin, this song frightens me.

MP3 :::
Chapterhouse – Satin Safe

UPDATE 9.15.08: I realize a lot of people will stumble upon this article as per Rick Wright’s recent passing. Please understand that this post, evidenced by the timestamp, was written a week prior. The Decibel Tolls offers nothing but condolensces to Wright’s family and friends. The primary purpose of this article was to simply express an opinion, in an irreverent sense, that early Pink Floyd albums were better, and nothing more. No disrespect is intended. Okay, soldiering on…

Never shying from controversy, it’s time once again to draw a definitive line in the sand.

In 1973, a pretty spectacular group by the name of teh Pink Floydz unleashed a pretty spectacular turd upon the world called Dark Side of the Moon. The turditude was unrelenting, with the fusion-infused Wish You Were Here, the dated and sleep-inducing Animals, and the bloated and idiotic The Wall extracting what was lousy about Dark Side and exemplifying each element across an entire discography. I say this in part due to my disdain for white blues, but also in part due to (my personal mantra) the associative listening experience. It’s hard to listen to post-Dark Side albums and not think about how amazing Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Meddle, and the like really were, both then and today. Sure, they were a different band, and good bands tend to morph throughout their career. But Pink Floyd elected, on their own volition, to suck, spewing torrents of lame from 1973 through, well, today I suppose. They proved their chops in their first five years, and then said “fuck it, let’s noodle like Clapton and make R&B records that you can’t shag to.”

Dark Side of the Moon is considered a cornerstone psychedelic rock record. Dark Side is as psychedelic as shopping for groceries or going to Six Flags. Some points:

• Unless you’re in a band that begins with “S” and ends in “piritualized,” gospel singers does not a pysch rock record make.
• When Roger gets those excitable throat pipes flaring like a kerosene lamp, he sounds like what I imagine one of the Dementors from the Harry Potter series sound like when they send out mating calls. Let Gilmour take over and let the sleeping dog lie, Brodeo.
• Never, ever let Alan Parsons tweak your knobs, unless you really want to sound like Yessongs. The only thing about Yes that resembles psychedelia is their album covers, which decidedly look like those fractal designs Trapper Keeper used to rock hard when I was in elementary school.
• As mentioned, we know they could’ve done better. If I wanted jazz and blues-infused borecore perfect for listening to while thumbing through Highlights in the dentist office lobby, I would’ve picked up The Weather Report. Where’s “Interstellar Overdrive,” mah frienzz?
• Sure, Dark Side brought musique concrète into the public psyche, and that’s spiffy keen, but the found sound on Piper was not only engaging and seamlessly executed, focused and fluid, but also acted as the centerpiece for many of the songs, such as radio recording pastiche of “Astronomy Domine.” On Dark Side, it just comes off as potheads fucking around in a multi-million dollar studio.
• Roger Waters, then and now, is still unintentionally hilarious.

One of the reasons I know my girlfriend Lana and I are ridin’ on an epic similar wavelength is that she, also, holds this fundamental tenet to be true – so I’m not alone in the Dark Side Sucks Doctrine. Her favorite PF excursion is “Summer ‘68″ off of Atom Heart Mother, and it’s certainly one of mine as well. “Summer ‘68″ is also post-Syd, so here’s evidence that Syd Barrett was not the lone firewall between Pink Floyd and “the suck.” When I hear this soaring, expansive, gorgeous, subdued psychedelic ballad, and then listen to, I dunno, “The Great Gig in the Sky,” I feel hurt and angry. Maybe this represents the zeitgeist with this musical movement – every other amazing late ’60s psych artist that didn’t reinvent themselves for the worse or alter their sound to the arena-centric sounds of the ’70s either broke up, went ballistic, or something else entirely (Can and their crowd tends to be the exemplary exception, though Can and “the suck” collided head-on a decade later after Damo bounced). It’s just kind of a bummer, I suppose. I hate when I’m talking about music, and someone asks about my favorite bands. I name Floyd and I usually get “oh, yeah, Dark Side is great.” Nay, it’s not. Dark Side is sordid and gives me indigestion.

Look, I love Pink Floyd, as showcased here. And I’ve included four of my favorite Floyd tracks below, which are also some of my just plain favorite songs period. I can’t listen to these triumphant songs and then turn around, crank up Dark Side and say “these jams are just as boss.” Because they’re not. I just, in good conscience, can’t do that. So for this… a pox on you, Roger Waters! A pox on you, scurvy scaliwag! Both you and Rick Wright… back away from the instruments… and the mixing board. Go! Get out of here! Count money or somethin’.

Sorry for being a hater. Nothin’ but good vibrations from here on out. Feel free to bash this entry in the comment section, I won’t take it personally. But all ye noble men should mash play on the MP3s below first.

As a quick and final aside, Roger Waters and Richard Gere bear quite a resemblance these days… which is amazing. Dang, mang. Roger’s making the same face I make every time I hear the shitfest “Shine on You Crazy Diamonds.”

MP3 :::
Pink Floyd – Summer ‘68
Pink Floyd – Astronomy Domine
Pink Floyd – Vegetable Man (Rare BBC Recording)
Pink Floyd – Nightmare / Cymbaline (Live)